Italy: October 18, Venice

Today we all went together to a garden at the bottom of the island. As I mentioned before, there aren't many green spaces in Venice, so it is nice to enjoy them when you can.  After the garden, we split off to do what we each wanted to do with our last day in Italy. Paul, Sarah, Cliff, Brian, and dad went to the Naval History Museum. Mom, Phoebe, and I went out in the city to see parts we hadn't seen yet. We all met back up at the palazzo before dinner, and we all agreed we wanted to go back to the Taverna and get another delicious meal.  We went back, and got our same table, and Silvio was our waiter again. He tried to sell us on ordering some giant fish that feeds 8, but we all wanted to try the delicious dishes other people had gotten the first time. We did order the mussels again, though! They were amazing. After dinner, we went over to Saint Mark's Square. At night they have musicians playing outdoors at the fancy cafes, and we listened for a while, and strolled around, and did a little dancing.

Piazza San Marco at night

 When we got back to the palazzo, we played another game of Settlers and got packed and ready to leave. Around 6am the next day, we all left Venice. Paul and Sarah went off on a few more days' adventure in Tuscany, and the rest of us flew back to Denver.  I don't have many pictures from our last day, so I'm just going to share cool photos that didn't make it into other posts.

Morning vegetable delivery in Venice

Glass sculpture and Campanile in Murano

Basilica of Saints Giovanni and Paolo, Venice

Venetian ambulance

Italy: October 17, Venice (Murano)

Today we left the congested city center and went to some outlying islands.  Our first stop on the vaporetto was the cemetery island. The entire island is the cemetery for the city of Venice. And because space is so limited, every 10 years, a section of the cemetery is exhumed and turned over, ready for new occupants. We spent some time walking around, and it was very interesting and pretty. The gravestones are quite different from how we do gravestones. They can be very elaborate, almost always include a colored photo of the deceased, and frequently have a built-in planter or vase for flowers. There are inscriptions, verses, quotes, small statues, candles, crosses, all kinds of things included on the gravestone, which lies flat along the ground, with an end piece that stands up as a headstone.

The cemetery island

After the cemetery island, we went to Murano. Murano is historically known for glassworks.  It was very pleasant, in large part because there were far fewer people there. We wandered around and looked at glass shops, and got to see a couple of glass blowing demonstrations.  I also stumbled across the Murano library! Hooray!

After a nice lunch, most of us went to the glass museum, which showed us a little bit about glass throughout the history of Venice. We did a little more shopping, then took the vaporetto back to the main island of Venice.

A pleasant day exploring Murano

We made dinner in the palazzo, and then mom, dad, Phoebe, Cliff, and I went to a concert. They do Vivaldi concerts every other night, preformed by musicians in period costumes from the 18th century.  It was a nice concert, we enjoyed it.